The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Anambra 2013 and Ngige’s Senate report card

    Since the commencement of the processes leading to November 16 Anambra governorship election, I have been watching with utter dismay and disappointment the distortion of bare facts and orchestrated propaganda to bring the down one of the most formidable candidates in the race, Senator Dr Chris Nwabueze Ngige of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Hired for the dirty job by those afraid of Ngige’s political antecedents and value in the politics of the state, were hatchet writers, bloggers and internet warriors.

    Their first task was to demonise Ngige by labelling him a dormant senator, alleging that he has not sponsored or co-sponsored any bill in the Senate since he was elected. In short, it was governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi who first raised the false alarm in a function in Awka and the jobbers cashed on it. That was when the strange and divisive politics of zoning which governor Obi introduced to the state’s politics ahead of November 16 election appeared to be failing him. It is very obvious to Nigerians who are keen watchers of Senate’s proceedings that Ngige remains one of the most vibrant senators in the upper chamber today, despite being in opposition. Ngige apart from sponsoring and co-sponsoring some bills participated actively in 2011/2012 Appropriation Bill and made significant input into the money bill that will be beneficial to the people of the state. He is also a constant contributor on the topical issues on the floor of the senate.

    When moves were made to weaken the labour unions at the peak of subsidy protests, Ngige was among the senators who stood solidly behind the unions, by opposing the bill which was allegedly sponsored by the Presidency through a senator from South-south zone.

    At a time Ngige was the only senator from Anambra State because Senator Andy Uba’s election was nullified and nobody was representing Anambra North following the protracted legal tussle between Senator Margery Okadigbo and Senator Alphonsus Igbeke over the seat. During this period, Ngige made sure that projects of great benefit the entire South-east, his state and constituency were inserted in the appropriation bill. This is easily reflected in the increased power projects in the entire South-east. He is in seven committees of the senate, and as a senator from the opposition party, he cannot be chairman of a committee.

    As a workaholic deputy chairman of the senate committee on power, he worked round the clock with other members to ensure that progress was in the sector as being witnessed today across the country with improved power supply in some cities including Anambra. Ministers of Power past and present, namely, Professor Barth Nnaji and Prof. Chinedu Nebo can testify that.

    He single-handedly moved the motion for the immortalisation of the late Prof. Chinua Achebe. As a result of that motion, Achebe was given a plenary session, an honour reserved only for National Assembly members. As a result of the motion also, the federal government gave Achebe a befitting national burial.

    Apart from this, he sponsored Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Act Cap R 11,LFN 2004 which seeks to provide for more judicial discretion and flexibility in the sentence imposed for robbery, depending on the facts and circumstances of each case, rather than having a pre-fixed maximum sentence and to clarify that hospitals and clinics must first administer necessary treatment to gunshot victims, before reporting the matter to the police within a reasonable period of time

    He also sponsored the amendment of the Federal Housing Authority Act Cap F14, LFN 2004 which seeks to provide for tenure for some of the members of the board of the Federal Housing Authority, and the General Manager who is CEO of the organization; and to remove the monetary cap on the borrowing powers of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and substitute presidential approval with ministerial approval for borrowing. Other bills sponsored by Ngige includes Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria Act Cap T3,LFN 2004, Flag and Coat of Arms Act Cap F30,LFN 2004, Flag of Nigerian Ships Act Cap F31,LFN 2004, Fertilizer (Control )Act Caps F25,LFN 2004, Public Officers Protection Act Cap P41,LFN 2004, Farmers Registration Council Bill, National Health Bill and National Health Insurance Bill.

    In addition, he has provided jobs to some of the unemployed youths in the state.

    All these incontrovertible facts are in the record of the proceedings of the present Senate, but the political jobbers and hatchet writers who are very lazy in research or investigation are capitalizing on the availability of the social media and non-sanction of it to try to deceive and misinform unsuspecting Nigerians, particularly the people of Anambra by fabricating all manners of allegations against Ngige. But they forget that Anambra people and Nigerians have become wise and cannot swallow all their lies hook, liner and sinker.

    Nigerians and the people of Anambra know that Ngige is not daft and was never one. He is a very deep and articulate person with great pace and zeal to get result on anything he engages himself. He is a selfless politician who believes that public fund should be used to better the lot of the people through the provision of basic infrastructural facilities, instead of sharing them from hand to hand under any guise.

    This is because he had a humble beginning. During his days as pupil at St. Patrick Primary School, Ogbete, Enugu, which he left in 1964, Ngige was an outstanding pupil both in academics and other extra-curriculum activities. He was never found wanting in anything. Not many were surprised when he made distinction in his school certificate examination at St. John Secondary School, Alor in 1972.

    Many had thought that he would be a lawyer, because he had studied arts and commercial subjects to class four before switching over to science subjects, leaving his younger brother, Emeka Ngige (SAN) to continue with arts subjects – a feat many never tried because of fear of failure.

    As if that was not enough and without much delay, Ngige secured admission to study Medicine at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN, where he graduated with flying colours in 1979. This was at a time most his mates were still retaking our school certificate. While in the university, he was actively involved in student union politics, which he never allowed to affect his studies and performance.

    Upon his graduation, many of his colleagues travelled to overseas, while others picked jobs in multinational companies, but Ngige in line with his deep flair for public and humanitarian services, opted for a job at the Federal Ministry of Health where he worked creditably for years before leaving voluntarily in 1998 as deputy director of hospital services, federal medical centres and teaching hospitals.

    While in Federal Ministry of Health, he was instrumental to the establishment of permanent sites for most of the federal medical centres and teaching hospitals, especially in the South-east zone. In continuation of his burning desire for public service, he ventured into the murky waters of Nigerian politics as one of the founding fathers of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. No wonder he was appointed the protem zonal publicity secretary of the party in the South-east in 1998 and later the assistant national/zonal secretary of the party in the zone between 1999 and 2002. The same year he was conferred with the national honour of Order of the Niger, OON, for his diligence and accountability in public service.

    It was from there that he emerged the governorship candidate of the PDP in Anambra State in 2003. Though his initial ambition was to become a senator, he was persuaded by the party stakeholders to run for the office of governor.

    Having been in public service all his life, Ngige is always conscious of Harold McAlindon’s words: “Do not follow where the path may lead, but go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” So from childhood, he never believed in bandwagonism, but in carving a niche for himself in anything he does.

    As senator currently representing Anambra Central Ngige has continued to identify with the people through his quality debates and contributions on the floor of the Senate. He has continued to remain his self and the man of the people, mindful of the fact that being oneself in a world that is constantly trying to make one something else is the greatest accomplishment.

     

    • Obiajulu, a teacher wrote from Awka, Anambra State

     

  • FEEDBACK

    FEEDBACK

    As the reader can see, I have decided to dedicate today’s column to reactions to three of my last four columns, i.e. those of September 4, 18 and 25. Between them the three attracted a total of over 200 texts and several emails. Two weeks ago I carried a somewhat lengthy but thoughtful reaction to that of September 11.

    Among the more thoughtful reactions to the last two columns which I wanted to publish but couldn’t for reasons of space are two; a 689-word piece from Sahalu Saidu, and a shorter one from Dr Nura H. Alkali. I’ll publish them next week, God willing.

    For last week’s column the editors of The Nation used the portrait of Sarkin Zazzau, Alhaji Shehu Idris, in place of Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja’s Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim’s. Nearly a third of the 58 texts I received on the piece drew my attention to the error. Below are the correct portraits. The mistake is regretted.

     

    Gen Danjuma, Suntai and Taraba

    Sir,

    Let me start this rejoinder with a disclaimer. I’m not here to defend the famed Abonta Kwararafa, General T.Y Danjuma. No. The colossus can do that himself or, if he likes, engage better hands to do that for him. All I seek to do is to widen the arguments of ace columnist Mohammed Haruna, and probably shed new lights on some of the issues he raised in his column of September 4 (“Another open letter to General T. Y. Danjuma”) on the current constitutional and political crisis in Taraba state. By accusing the General of silence, the writer probably thought the Jarmai Zazzau would just act without carefully checking what is going on. In Haruna’s piece, there was even a veiled attempt to even make the detribalized and patriotic general appear to be siding with Christians in this whole drama.

    Ladies and gentlemen, the Taraba political logjam may appear to a distant watcher as a religious struggle between Muslims and Christians but on a closer look, it is what it is: a crude cold battle for power. Speaker Haruna Tsokwa, for instance, who is hell bent on sending Governor Danbaba Danfulani Suntai back to the US for medication is a dyed-in- the-wool believer and elder in the conservative, predominantly Jukun, CRCN church. Hon. Josiah Kente who leads the anti Suntai army is a born-again believer. Some Christians in the Taraba state House of Assembly oppose any idea of a Suntai continuous stay in Government House.

    For the teeming people of the southern part of the state, power shift to that zone is at the center of it all. In a recent meeting at Takum, Sen. Emmanuel Bwacha, the senator representing the zone at the National Assembly, said he was prepared to lay down his seat as a senator(if not his life even) for this aspiration. That is the measure of his and our resolve on this matter. Not for him to be governor but that the zone produces one! Every true son and daughter of Southern Taraba feels this way too. All the other zones in the state have produced a governor and we have played second place for far too long since Taraba was created.

    We in the southern zone don’t hate Muslims! We can’t afford to!

    Emmanuel Bello,

    Former Commissioner of Information,

    Taraba State.

    Sir,

    How do you expect the general (T. Y. Danjuma) to intervene when his foot soldiers in Christ (Jerry Gana and John Dara) were at the airport to receive Suntai? My opinion is that you may be asking the wrong person to intervene on the crisis in Taraba.

    +2348039753275

    Sir,

    I disagree with you on the assertion that the so-called Middle Belt which is located in north-central Nigeria is mainly Christian, because looking at the states that make up the Middle Belt, only Plateau and Benue are mainly Christian. And by the way, is General Danjuma from the Middle Belt? Methinks he is from Taraba State and the last time I checked, Taraba State is geographically in the North -Eastern part of Nigeria.

    Abdurrahman,

    Galadima Road, Kano.

    +2348102884060

     

    Ten Tears of Etsu Nupe

    Sir,

    Yours on “Ten years of the 13th Etsu Nupe” (September 18) refers. Mallam Dendo had seven sons namely, Mamman Majigi, Abdugboya and Usman Zaki by his Fulani wife Adama; Mustapha, Mamudu, and Masaba, by his Nupe wife Fatima; and Ibrahim by another Nupe wife. Umaru Majigi was the eldest grandson of Mallam Dendo and son of Mamman Majigi.

    Garba Abdul,

    +2348037860515

    Sir,

    I completely disagree with you that Etsu Nupe has been too liberal in awarding his emirate’s traditional titles. The Etsu has NEVER EVER given title to any undeserving person. I expected you to have given instances. I have known the Etsu Nupe since 2nd July, 1973 when we assembled at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, for cadet training as members of Regular Course 14. In fact, one of our Indian Instructors, Capt Grewal, saw the good leadership qualities in him and gave him the title chief. That became his alias as we began to call him chief or sarki.

    Capt Momy G (rtd),

    Publicity Secretary, NDA Regular Course 14.

    +2348050802000

    Sir,

    Thanks a lot for your incisive Wednesday articles. However sometimes factual errors do crop up in them. For instance, in the Etsu Nupe piece you stated at the end of the third paragraph that the Dan Fodio’s jihad was carried out in the LATE 19th century instead of d EARLY part of the century.

    Muhammad,

    +2348037037462

    Sir,

    I am from Ogidi (the town where, as you pointed out, the Nupe army defeated the British cavalry on June 26, 1896). A distinguished delegation from Bida was with us on the occasion of Ogidi Day on June 15. The team comprised Manko Babayitso (Ciroma), Yakawu, Yabagi Shehu, Prince Ndayako and Bako Mustapha. That was the first time since 1897 that Ogidi would receive that level of Nupe visitors.

    Tunde Ipinmisho,

    Head, Corporate Communications,

    Federal Housing Authority, Abuja.

    Sir,

    Your column of September 18 refers please. It is NOT correct that of the five Etsu in Usman Zaki’s House Etsu Yahaya’s 10 yrs is longest. The longest reign to date in that house is that of Bello (1915 to 1926). Also the similarities between Nupe and Yoruba languages and cultures are not products of 1804 Jihad but due to close interaction between the two people that dated much earlier than the Jihad. One of the most popular Alafin of Oyo, Shango, was said to be half Nupe.

    Ahmad.

    +2348150618353

    Sir,

    I read with nostalgia ten years of the 13th Etsu. Having finished from Federal Polytechnic, Bida, in 1981 and still living among the Nupe 32 years after, I find them similar in many ways to my Igbo people. I have spent the greater part of my life here in harmony and wish that the promises of an integrated nation shall not elude us. Long live the Nupe Kingdom!

    George Dike,

    Haske Hotels,

    Minna.

     

    Twenty years of Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja

    Sir,

    Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja Awwal got his emirship courtesy of “ogas at the top.” (“Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja, the (almost) rejected stone…” September 25). Pray for the day ogas at the bottom will decide both traditional and political leadership

    NAT,

    +2348028233050

    Sir,

    A superb “historical” write-up, that is, despite some few uncharitable, unnecessary and uncalled for insinuations, particularly as the columnist went into wild imagination about the role of the late Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Umaru Ndayako, in the saga as Chairman of the Niger State council of emirs. Objective comment and history will commend the Etsu Nupe for electing to protect and defend the custom, tradition and choice of Suleja people above the selfish interests of his state Governor and the nation’s then military president, which showed rare courage.

    Two: there was nothing like “a classic case of how tenacity in the pursuit of one’s objective is more likely than not to pay off” in Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim’s ascension to the throne. Rather it was just a case of the common sense Hausa adage of “kowa yasamu rana sai yayi shanya” (literally, we are all opportunists) that was vigorously exploited by varying shades of elite friends and acquaintances in the run down to President Ibrahim Babangida’s 1992-94 political engineering.That was when the likes of Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki, Abiola, Bashir Tofa and many others from the military, academia, bureaucracy, business, etc, were created, empowered and imposed ostensibly to facilitate the perpetuation of the military President in power.

    Thirdly, there are no problems any longer with the emirate kingmakers and so-called two ruling houses as feared by the columnist. The then governor, Dr. Musa Inuwa, was instructed to amend the custom, tradition and kingmakership as they related to ascension of the Emir of Suleja and to remove all restrictions previously placed on aspirant Awwal Ibrahim. The kingmakers now are the Santali, Sarkinyaki and the Mallams. Whether the ruling house is one or two is to be determined by political interest of the “oga at the top” of the day.

    Musa Mazawaje,

    Suleja.

    +2348032547200

    Sir,

    I always enjoy your column due to the fact that it is always well researched in great detail with the facts well documented. This piece on Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja is a case in point reaffirming the fact power belongs to Allah (SWT) and He gives it to whom He wills. In addition to that just imagine how many unpopular leaders we rejected who might have been our salvation in this country just like the emir. This is food indeed for thought for every Nigerian.

    Ahmed S. J.

    +2348036133653

    Sir,

    As a fellow journalist, I’ve kept track of your articles primarily because of your skills in writing and sticking to the cause you believe in even if it is pseudo sectarian. However, in the article you wrote on Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja, you misunderstood what a linguist means. A linguist is not a person who speaks many languages. He is a person who does a scientific study of languages. He who understands and speaks several languages like Emir Awwal is a polyglot.

    Donatus Okpe

    Lokoja

    +2348069615027

     

  • Still planning–and polling-without facts

    Still planning–and polling-without facts

    Back in 1966, the American economist, Dr Wolgang Stolper, on secondment from USAID to help prepare Nigeria’s First Development Plan (1962-68) accented the difficulty of the task, with a book appropriately titled “Planning without Facts.”

    This past week, the World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Marie-Françoise Marie-Nelly, warned during a workshop in Lagos for statisticians that there could be no meaningful development or evaluation of national strategies without quality statistics to identify socio-economic challenges.

    Little seems to have changed during the nearly five decades between.

    They have continued to draw up plans on practically every aspect of national life without facts. without even knowing how many people they are planning for, nor how they are constituted.

    The point of departure for serious national planning is the population census. It is the body of data – the sampling frame – from which field investigators draw up a representative sample for the kind of study and analysis that will make it possible for them to apply their findings to the general population with confidence.

    But nobody knows the population of Nigeria to the nearest 25 million. From the 1950s, the population census has been padded, for political reasons. Instead of rectifying the errors of the preceding census, every subsequent census has reinforced and even amplified them. Each exercise has been in effect an exercise in programmed inflation.

    So much for the population size.

    When it comes to the distribution of the population, especially the pattern of distribution, census after census has been marked by a sharp departure from the laws of demography. The Sahel, much of it semi-arid, is credited with a larger share of the population than the coastal, forest and savanna regions.

    It is true that the North occupies a much larger area than the South. But even this larger area does not satisfactorily explain the population distribution as manifested in the national census. Neither the ecology nor the economy can support the large populations with which vast stretches of the North are credited.

    Even where there is a large population as in metropolitan Kano, not to be confused with the rest of Kano State – it still defies reason that, after Jigawa was excised from it, Kano is still credited with a larger population than Lagos.

    Nobody, it is necessary to insist, knows the size of the national population to the nearest 25 million, or, to be quite generous, the nearest 15 percent. Now, if a study reports findings with a margin of error of plus or minus 15 percent, we would reject it on the ground that it is no better than guesswork. Even if the findings fall within the acceptable margin of error, they would still be questionable because it is impossible to use flawed data to arrive at valid findings.

    But we continue not only to plan with the census figures confected every ten years, but also to invest them with the sanctity of actuality. This is the aeronautical equivalent of flying blind.

    And it explains, in some measure, why nothing in Nigeria works the way it was designed to work. To be sure, corruption and incompetence play a large part in the national dysfunction, but the dearth of reliable facts and figures must also be accounted a major contributory factor.

    Take as an example the oil industry, the lifeblood of the economy. Nobody knows how much oil is extracted from our waters or shores. In 1980, Professor Ayodele Awojobi, the University of Lagos polymath, revealed that the barrel used for lifting oil in Nigeria was four gallons larger than the standard barrel. The situation may well have been rectified, but the fact remains that nobody knows how much oil is actually lifted.

    When they say that as much as one-fourth of Nigeria’s oil output is stolen, that is just guesswork based on guesswork.

    Just as nobody knows how much oil is extracted, nobody knows how much oil is consumed. During the last oil ‘subsidy” crisis, the NNPC and the Department of Petroleum Resources gave wildly different figures for national daily consumption. It follows that, if consumption of petroleum products was indeed being subsidised, it was impossible to calculate the amount of subsidy. Yet a trainload of projects was rolled out, to be funded with the money that would be realised from cutting the alleged subsidy.

    Hardly a day passes without one official declaring with certitude how many billions would accrue to the federal exchequer from ending rice or wheat-flour or cement or sugar or poultry imports, and how many billion tons of cassava would be harvested in the next season as a result of improved seedlings provided by the government.

    Whenever they put out the inflation rate, you have to ask: “In what country do these people live?” For the figure bears almost no correspondence to the experience of the people. And just the other day, two government agencies gave different figures for the rate of unemployment, each of them guesswork at best.

    Because there is no reliable census data, and thus no reliable sampling frame, it is impossible to draw a probabilistic sample – one in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being represented. In the absence of such a sample, it is impossible to conduct meaningful public opinion polls in Nigeria. Yet, results of opinion polls conducted by the media or third parties are routinely reported in the news, especially during elections.

    In one notorious instance, a newspaper lavishly published “exit polls” on an election that was yet to be held. In another instance, the forecast for the presidential election published by the same newspaper, in conjunction with a foreign polling agency that refused to submit its methodology to scrutiny, was matched in every particular by the outcome. Nate Silver, the statistician who predicted Barack Obama’s victory in the 2102 presidential election with near-perfect accuracy, could not have done better.

    But given the flawed sampling frame on which the Nigerian poll was based, it is perfectly permissible to infer, as many commentators did, that the election result had been determined, and the task before the pollsters and the newspaper was to fix their findings to that result.

    The entry on the Nigerian scene two years ago of NOIPolls, a partner with Gallup USA qualifying itself as “the No. 1 for country-specific polling services in the West African region,” promises to improve opinion polling in the country. NOIPolls says it enhances decision-making across all sectors of the Nigerian economy by delivering “forward-thinking research and relevant data,

    Dr Goodluck Jonathan will no doubt be heartened by the finding in its August 2013 poll that that six of every 10 Nigerians (the actual figure is 57 percent) approved his job performance, up four points from the previous month, and the highest since January 2013.

    Not bad for a month marked by tumult within the ruling PDP, nationwide strike by university teachers, and killings the Boko Haram on a blood-curdling scale.

    He will most certainly be surprised to find, however, that his approval is strongest not in his South-South redoubt (66 percent), but in the South East (76 percent), followed by the North- Central (70 percent).

    To borrow the language of election analysts in years past, could Dr Jonathan’s strong approval rating in the South East be due to the Anyim Pius Anyim Factor – Anyim being the dynamic and high-achieving Secretary to the Government of the Federation? By the same reasoning, Dr Jonathan’s impressive approval rating in North Central will have to be attributed to the Namadi (Vice President) Sambo Factor.

    General Muhammadu Buhari, where are you, sir?

    No prizes for making it out that Dr Jonathan’s less-than-robust rating in the South South has got to be a manifestation of the Amaechi Factor.

    Dr Jonathan has nothing to fear concerning the Southwest, where 33 percent of the residents were neutral about his job performance, unlike the Northwest where 36 percent disapprove his performance. Could that be the Babangida Aliyu factor?

    NOIPolls is a huge improvement on what previously passed for opinion polling in Nigeria. Its latest poll, conducted from August 12 through 15, was based on a random sample of 1009 phone-owning Nigerians aged 18 and above in the six geopolitical zones. The reported margin of error is a healthy plus or minus 3 percent.

    One question arises from the survey, however. Do the findings also reflect the views of the 30 percent of the population that, according to a previous NOIPolls investigation, does not own phones?

    By the way, is it true that the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, owns the outfit wholly or substantially?

  • Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja, the (almost) rejected stone…

    Sarkin Zazzaun Suleja, the (almost) rejected stone…

    Last Monday witnessed the colourful climax of the four-day celebration of Alhaji Muhammad Awwal Ibrahim’s ascension to the throne of the historic Suleja Emirate 20 years ago. Suleja, the emirate’s capital, is the biggest satellite town of Abuja, the federal capital, bar possibly Keffi in Nasarawa State.

    The emirate was founded in the early 19th century as Abuja by Abu Jatau – Abu Ja, for short – (in English, Abu the fair skinned), the youngest of three sons of Ishaq Jatau, a prince of the Zazzau Habe dynasty ousted from Zaria by Usman Dan Fodio’s jihad. Abu Ja’s formal title as emir was Sarkin Zazzaun Abuja. Makau, the first son had died in a battle near Lapai, a Nupe town in today’s Niger State. Abu Ja, himself, died shortly after founding the emirate and was succeeded by his older brother, Abu Kwaka (Abu, the dark skinned). Since then the emirship of the territory has alternated between the two houses of Abu Ja and Abu Kwaka.

    In the old colonial North right up to the end of the First Republic in 1966, the emir was ranked 22nd among the region’s 31 second-class emirs and 38th among all the 119 gazetted emirs and chiefs in the region. It was thus one of the most important emirates and chiefdoms in the region.

    In 1944, one of his uncles, Alhaji Suleimanu Barau from the Abu Kwaka ruling house, became the sixth emir. He reigned for 35 years and it was during his time that the regime of General Murtala Muhammed took the momentous decision to move Nigeria’s federal capital from the congested coastal city of Lagos to a virgin territory in the middle of the country. This so-called virgin territory was in Abuja emirate.

    A nation-wide competition to find a name for the new capital ended with a decision by the federal authorities to simply appropriate the existing name of the territory and ask its rulers to find another name. Alhaji Suleimanu Barau, who happened to be emir at the time was, like the founder of Abuja, fair skinned. The emirate simply adopted his abridged name–Suleja.

    However, it was not only its original name that Abuja forfeited. About 80 per cent of today’s federal capital was Abuja territory, with the rest coming from neighbouring Nasarawa and Kogi states.

    This was the diminished emirate, whose throne Alhaji Muhammad Awwal Ibrahim, CON, ascended exactly 20 years ago last Monday. His ascension is today a classic case of the old saying about a bad beginning making a good ending. It is equally a classic case of how tenacity in the pursuit of one’s objective is more likely than not to pay off.

    When Alhaji Suleimanu died in 1979, he was succeeded by Alhaji Ibrahim Dodo Musa from the Abu Ja ruling house. Alhaji Ibrahim, in turn, died in July 1993, thus returning the crown – or, more appropriately, the turban – to Abu Kwaka. Easily the most prominent prince of the House was Alhaji Muhammad Awwal. At that time he had been a university administrator, a permanent secretary in Niger State and had capped his successful public career as a two-time elected governorship of the state between October 1979 and December 1983.

    His career apart, he was a superb linguist, who understood and spoke English, a subject he had his first degree in, Arabic and his native Hausa fluently and eloquently. He also had a deep knowledge of Islam, his religion.

    As governor he, like so many prominent politicians of the Second Republic, was eventually to fall under the heavy sledgehammer of General Muhammadu Buhari, whose coup truncated the Second Republic three months into its second four years: a military tribunal under General Buhari’s regime found the governor guilty of abuse of power and corruption, sent him to prison practically for life and banned him from ever holding public office.

    Twenty months after General Buhari came to power, he was ousted by his army chief, General Ibrahim Babangida, in a bloodless palace coup in August 1985. One of General Babangida’s first acts was to release many of the politicians jailed by his predecessor and grant them amnesty. Alhaji Awwal was a beneficiary of this amnesty.

    As the most prominent prince from the Abu Kwaka House, not to mention the fact that he was school mates at Government College, Bida, with some of the most prominent citizens of Niger State, notably Generals Muhammadu Wushishi, one-time army chief, Babangida, Gado Nasko, then FCT minister, and future head-of-state Abdulsalami Abubakar, many Nigerlites thought he was not only the most obvious choice. Many, including this reporter, thought he was the best.

    Apparently we couldn’t have been more wrong in our thinking in the eyes of the four kingmakers, led by the Galadima, Alhaji Shu’aibu Barde, who met after the seventh day prayers for the repose of the soul of Alhaji Ibrahim, to choose his successor; Alhaji Awwal did not make the shortlist of three candidates they sent to the civilian governor, Dr Musa Inuwa, to choose from. Top of that list was Alhaji Muhammad Bashir, the chief librarian of the University of Abuja and Alhaji Awwal’s cousin and son of Alhaji Suleiman Barau, the sixth emir.

    Alhaji Bashir, it turned out, was also the popular choice. However, for some seemingly inexplicable reason, Governor Inuwa rejected the kingmakers’ choice under the pretext that they were not properly constituted.

    The pretext was not without basis. The emirate’s kingmakers were Madaki as chair, Galadima, Wambai and Dallatu. All four were supposed to be appointed from the emir’s ordinary subjects. However, during his reign Alhaji Suleimanu appointed prominent princes to fill in the titles, except Galadima. There were widespread suspicions that he did so to eliminate all possible challenges to his son, Bashir, when next it was the turn of his House to produce the emir.

    If that was his strategy, it almost worked. When Alhaji Ibrahim died in 1993, only the Galadima was not a prince. The other three, Alhaji Shuaibu Na’ibi, the octogenarian Madaki, Alhaji Aliyu Bisalla, the equally elderly Wambai and Alhaji Awwal himself as Dallatu were all princes. All three had to step down since, by tradition, they could only be voted for and could not themselves vote.

    This meant only the Galadima was left to vote. Hence, the reconstitution of the kingmakers, which brought in the emirate’s Chief Imam, Salanke, the Friday Mosque Imam and Magajin Malam, who anoints and turbans a new emir. Under normal circumstances, all three played only spiritual roles in the selection of an emir and had no vote.

    The Galadima as the only one with a vote on the panel left no one in doubt that his choice was Alhaji Bashir. But he was not the only obstacle Awwal faced. Others included the emirate’s tradition that only sons of emirs were eligible to contest. Alhaji Awwal was a grandson.

    Another formidable obstacle was the state’s council of emirs, headed by the late Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Umar Sanda Ndayako. The council played an advisory but important role in the selection of emirs in the state.

    As Niger State’s governor between 1979 and 1983, Alhaji Awwal and the Etsu Nupe became estranged over the politics of the state. It, therefore, did not come as a surprise that the Etsu supported the selection of Alhaji Bashir as emir. In this, however, he was not alone. Minutes of the meeting of the council on September 14, 1993, which the rested Citizen magazine was in possession of and excerpts of which it published in its cover story of the July 32, 1994 edition, showed that all the other six emirs present – those of Kontagora, Borgu, Agai’e, Lapai, Minna and Kagara – unanimously supported the choice of Alhaji Bashir.

    Even the governor was said to have been reluctant in his rejection of Alhaji Bashir and merely bowed to intense pressure from his “ogas at the top”, i.e. friends of Alhaji Awwal in high places, to ask the kingmakers to rethink their choice.

    The problem with the governor’s pretext was that the kingmakers he rejected were the same ones that chose Alhaji Ibrahim as Suleja’s seventh emir in 1979, the only difference being Alhaji Awwal’s father as the Dallatu.

    Instead of heeding the governor’s instruction for a rethink, the Galadima headed for the courts in October 1993. As if in anticipation of this move, another selection panel was reconstituted at the behest of the state government, this time with Santali replacing Galadima as the chair. Predictably the new panel shortlisted four candidates and put Alhaji Awwal on top and Alhaji Bashir as third.

    The governor quickly announced Alhaji Awwal as the new emir on September 23, 1993. All hell broke loose in Suleja the following day and in the aftermath of the riots that followed it became impossible for months to turban Alhaji Awwal as the emir.

    On November 17 1993, General Sani Abacha struck and threw out the civilian governors elected under General Babangida, including, of course, Dr Inuwa. Then, on May 10, 1994, the Niger State High Court sitting in Suleja under Justice Oseni Oyewo ruled in favour of Alhaji Bashir and directed that the state government “appoints him as the emir of Suleja, immediately.” The government did not comply immediately and Alhaji Awwal went to court on appeal and succeeded in getting a stay of execution.

    Still the state’s military administrator, Colonel Cletus Emein, who had succeeded Dr Inuwa, seized upon the judgement of the Suleja High Court and immediately deposed Alhaji Awwal as emir and banished him to Rijau in Kontagora emirate. However, instead of Rijau, Alhaji Awwal chose and was allowed to live in Kaduna.

    It was from there that he appealed the Suleja High Court judgement all the way to the Supreme Court. There, he finally got a favourable judgment on December 6, 1996 when the court said his selection in 1993 was valid.

    However, Suleja remained without an emir until January 2000 when the civilian governor at the time, Abdulkadir Kure, took the bull by the horns and restored him as emir. Again all hell broke loose.

    It’s been 13 years since those riots and the people of Suleja have since resigned to their apparent fate. In those 13 years Alhaji Awwal, on his part, has conducted himself in ways that seem to have endeared him to his subjects and eliminated the initial popular opposition he faced. In the simplicity of his lifestyle and in shunning materialism, he seems today to be the nearest replication among all the emirs in the North of the much revered late Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar III, father of the current Sultan, who reigned for over 50 years.

    As he celebrates 20 years of his controversial ascension as the eighth emir of Suleja, he must be aware that the world is watching to see how he resolves the problem of his emirate’s kingmakers, which has been at the heart of the crisis of his own selection. Right now all four – Madaki, Galadima, Wambai and Dallatu – are princes rather than his ordinary subjects. Were he to pass away today there will be no proper panel to choose a new emir, something that can easily plunge the emirate into a crisis worse than his own.

    The emir must also know that there are indeed speculations in town that he is moving quietly to make his ruling house the only one. These speculations may be totally baseless. Even then he should not dismiss them as mere mischief. Instead he should come out openly to assure his subjects that the speculations are false.

    As a deeply religious emir, probably the closest duplication of a scholar-emir in the North since the deposition of Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi in 1963 as one of Kano’s most powerful emirs, he should know from his own experience that men can only propose but it is only God who disposes.

    He should therefore focus his mind on leaving behind a praiseworthy legacy and leave the rest to the Almighty God.

    Allah ja zamanin sarki! Ya sa sarki ya gama lafiya.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Nigeria of nightmares or dreams; Biometrically over-captured; NEITI; NIMASA Life Jackets

    The Al Shabaab outrageous attack on the Westgate Mall, Kenya, claiming as many as 60 lives, is a duplication of what is happening daily in Nigeria with Boko Haram and the cattle/Fulani herders-wilful destruction of lives and properties- terrorism.   In addition in Nigeria, there is political devilry, death and destruction all around deconstructing the country. The fatally flawed 1999 constitution, the disastrous over-centralisation of the Federal Government and the underdevelopment arising from Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness, CINS, have led us to a serious crossroads- de-amalgamation and de-Nigerianisation. At last even David Mark, long-sitting senate president, has mentioned the words ‘National Conference’ without spitting but without the key word ‘Sovereign’. Nigerians need to be treated with more respect than to be thrown a political ‘bone’ when they demand their rights. The current political restlessness is consequent to an outrageously flamboyant anti-people lifestyle of politicians and top civil servants. It has unpredictable consequences. Over 40 years of political leadership failure created a desperate generation of callous cheats, killers and politicians with mostly dangerous democratic credentials- ‘Winning by buying power’.

    We suffer in ‘The Nigeria of Our Nightmares’ with governments robbing the citizens officially. Though many Nigerians of my generation have worked lifelong to help create the ‘Nigeria of Our Dreams’, it escapes us. We are urged to pay more taxes for less service. While Italian engineers are righting wronged giant Costa Concordia ships, Nigerians have deadly bumpy rides on potholed roads neglected by Nigeria’s political class.

    Nigerians are slapped and punched repeatedly by the many hands and fists of government. Nigerians have been slapped stupid by poor power supply, roads and services and greedy governance. Are we now to register and tax generators, boreholes, wells and overhead tanks – by which Nigerians ‘manage’ and survive the massive corruption and incompetence of government? This is a TAX ON SURVIVAL, A TAX ON EXISTENCE!

    Nigerians are denied simple fingerprint investigation for want of a computerised Nigerian fingerprint bank. Yet Nigerians have been ‘biometric over-captured’. We have computerised biometric data banks from ID cards x 3, INEC Voter’s Cards X 2, passport registration, phone SIM card registration X each number, bank registration, PIN number, TIN number, FRSC Driver’s Licence X2, FRSC Vehicle Plate Number 2 and the New Police Vehicle Registration?

    We are over-registered. The cost to government and citizens’ time and money, totals many billions. Billions will roll into the FRSC and Police but who will account for this money extorted ‘legally illegally’. If this is not 419, what is?  Who will unite all biometric data banks?

    Does some Nigerian actually say at a government meeting ‘Let us screw Nigerians with yet another scam? Any suggestions? The same again? Wow, how brilliant. And remember we must not share our registration data bank with any other organisations. Swear!’

    Not surprisingly, the NGO Good Governance Initiative Nigerians, GGI, confirms that Nigerians are forced to spend N2,700,000,000,000 /annum on fuelling generators. Which oil marketer will want PHCN to improve? Only a true nationalist presidential leadership will overcome corporate oil power to give us electric power, especially solar power. Rome’s Emperor Tiberius the Tyrant was followed by the even worse Emperor Caligula the Cruel. What hope for Nigeria where the leadership is self-serving? The crassness of corruption knows no bounds in Nigeria.

    But there is hope. Nigerians should send letters of encouragement to the iconic ‘People’s Lawyers’ including Femi Falana for, among other things, fighting for the rights of children to decent education and Akure-based lawyer, Morakinyo Ogele who is suing FRSC over the new number plate. They are fighting for us at their own expense.  Do something yourself like fundraising for legal battles.

    There is more hope. Under a ‘Safety at Sea Programme’, NIMASA’s distribution of life jackets Nembe Bonny Waterfront is a wonderful demonstration of ‘normal’. 25,000 still needed. The life jacket is to water what the Insecticide Treated Net, ITN, is to malaria.

    There is even more hope. A Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, NEITI’s retrospective audit has recovered $2billion. The fear of NEITI is the beginning of wisdom. Beyond recovery, NEITI has forced industry players to play it straighter in 2013. The deterrent effect of an independent NEITI, EFCC or ICPC Desk in all top organisation will prevent much corporate and MDA corruption. Yes, it may also promote EFCC and ICPC corruption but we hope not. We need to institute awards like GCON for NEITI- type organisations.

    Stowaway boy, Daniel Oikhena was heading for America. Unlike Zik of Africa, whose ‘humble beginnings’ led him to stow away on a ship, Daniel chose a ‘ landing gear seat’ and is due for psychiatric tests. Does anyone offer psychiatric tests to those poor youth escaping Nigeria crossing the murderous Sahara and the deadly Mediterranean to camps like Lampedusa, Italy? Does anyone offer psychiatric tests to National Assembly, NASS members voting  ‘Life Salaries’ for NASS principle officers, tax exemptions, or voting themselves the highest Salaries and Perks- SAP- and corruption-ridden constitutional projects? With many unemployed psychologists we should demand psychological and psychiatric tests on government ‘uniforms’ who to go berserk daily draining Nigeria’s morale and young life-blood. How many must die to make a nation? How many farmers have been killed by Fulani in Plateau and Iseyin? And we still eat cow meat! Are we a spineless people? Ask the dead ‘Was Nigeria worth dying for?’ Politicians should stop boasting about nothing; look around the world and deliver Nigeria into the 21st Century, mentally, morally and materially!

     

  • Ten years of the 13th Etsu Nupe

    Ten years of the 13th Etsu Nupe

    It seems like only yesterday when Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, CFR, was sworn in as the 13th Etsu Nupe on September 11th, 2003, barely a day shy of his 51st birthday. As a birthday gift of sorts, the then colonel in the country’s armoured corps – he was promoted brigadier-general in arrears after becoming emir – couldn’t have wished for better.

    When his highly experienced and widely respected maternal uncle, Alhaji Umaru Sanda Ndayako, died on September 1, 2003 as the 12th Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Yahaya was not initially in serious contention as a possible successor even though it was the turn of Usman Zaki ruling house to which he belonged to produce the next Etsu.

    The last time it was the house’s turn to do so in 1962 when Alhaji Muhammadu Ndayako who had ruled for 27 years, died, the rotational sequence among the emirate’s three ruling houses – Usman Zaki, Muhammadu Masaba and Umaru Majigi in that order – was disrupted when Alhaji Yahaya’s father, Nakordi Abubakar, lost the struggle for the throne to Alhaji Usman Sarki, then the country’s minister of Internal Affairs and a member of Masaba. Zaki, Masaba and Majigi were sons of Malam Dendo, the leading flag bearer of Shehu Usman bin Fodio in Nupeland during the latter’s late 19th century jihad.

    Ten years ago it looked like History was going to repeat itself once more following the death of Alhaji Umaru Sanda after he’d ruled for 28 years, a year longer than his father; for a brief while it looked like the succession would be a free for all among interested candidates from all the three ruling houses. However, a piece of paper which confirmed that with Etsu Umaru Sanda the rotation among the three houses had come full circle with the houses producing four Etsus each and therefore the rotation should start all over again in the event of his death saved the day for the Usman Zaki ruling house.

    Even then Alhaji Yahaya was initially not the unanimous choice of his ruling house, especially as he had spent most of his adult life as a soldier away from home. But then with the support of his uncle and titular head of the house, Alhaji Halilu Kafa, one time company secretary of the New Nigerian Development Company in its heydays, he became the nominee of the House of Usman Zaki. The Niger State governor at the time, Engineer Abdulkadir Kure, accepted the nomination without hesitation and discountenanced the candidates from the other houses.

    And so on September 11, 2003 Alhaji Yahaya received his staff of office from Governor Kure as the 13th Etsu Nupe. For the man, the day must’ve been possibly the happiest in his life and the clearest manifestation of the fact that in the end God alone gives and withholds power. This seemed pretty obvious from his choice of Chapter 3, Verse 26 of the Holy Qur’an as the opening remarks of his coronation speech.

    “Say: O Allah, Master of the Kingdom!” he quoted from the Qur’an in Arabic. “Though gives the kingdom to whomsoever Thou pleases and takes away the kingdom from whomsoever Thou pleases, and Thou exalts whom Thou pleases and abases whom Thou pleases; in Your hand is the good; surely Thou hast power over all things.”

    The kingdom that God gave Alhaji Yahaya that beautiful Thursday morning ten years ago has had a very proud History. A measure of its historical importance lies in the position of the Etsu in the order of protocol of the emirs and chiefs in the North. According to the authoritative 2006 book, Emirs and Politicians: Reform, Reaction and Recrimination in Northern Nigeria, 1950-1966 by Professor Alhaji Mahmood Yakubu, erstwhile Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), there were 119 gazetted emirs and chiefs in the North by the end of the First Republic in 1966.

    Sixteen of these were first class, 31 second, another 31 third, seven fourth, an odd one fifth and 33 ungraded. The Etsu Nupe was the ninth among the first class emirs after the Sultan of Sokoto, the Shehu of Borno, the Emirs of Gwandu, Kano and Bauchi, the Lamido of Adamawa and the Emirs of Katsina and Zaria, in that order.

    Today, the Etsu Nupe is the permanent chairman of the Niger State council of traditional rulers. And in the Gwandu western half of the historical Sokoto Caliphate, he has been second only to the Emir of Gwandu, ahead of the Emir of Ilorin and the Etsus of Agai’e, Lapai, Lafiagi, Tsonga and Tsaragi, not necessarily in that order.

    Historically, the kingdom Alhaji Yahaya’s great grandfathers and grand uncles presided over first from Rabah- not the Sokoto Rabah – and finally from Bida served as an important bridge between the Sokoto Caliphate and Yorubaland and Benin Kingdom. This has led to many similarities between Nupe and Yoruba languages and cultures, itself a subject matter all of its own.

    Alhaji Yahaya has good reason to celebrate his ten years on the throne of his forefathers. First, of the five Etsus from his ruling house he has ruled longest. Second, his initiation three years ago of an annual Nupe Day for the celebration of the unity, culture and the political-economy of the Nupe at home and in the Diaspora on June 26 of every year has a potential for restoring Nupeland to its old glory of being one of the most important political entities in the West African sub-region. June 26, 1896 was the day the Bida army under Makun Muhammadu defeated the Royal Niger Company Constabulary at Ogidi, in the outlaying Yoruba regions of the then vast Nupe Kingdom, when the British commenced their attempt at replacing Nupe hegemony in those areas with their own hegemony.

    Bida eventually fell to the British on January 27, 1897, but not before giving the British a bloody nose for months. However, once Bida fell the collapse of the rest of the caliphate all the way to Sokoto proved more or less a piece of cake for the British.

    Beyond sustaining the rich and proud legacy of his forebears, Alhaji Yahaya has served as an effective chairman of the National Mosque, Abuja, in maintaining and sustaining it as an architectural landmark and a leading centre of religious and intellectual activities in the country’s federal capital.

    Ten years is just about one third the number of years his maternal uncle who he succeeded served as Etsu with distinction. In those ten years Alhaji Yahaya has achieved a lot but being only human he has also made his mistakes. Many of his subjects including this reporter, for example, believe he has been too liberal in awarding his emirate’s traditional titles to those he believes are deserving of those titles. At any rate many of these titles lack historical and cultural basis.

    Again, as with so many traditional rulers in the country, those in the North in particular, there was popular anger that he became too close to the political authorities at the state and federal levels in the run-up to the 2011 elections.

    Baagandozhi! May you reign for long and may your achievements surpass those of your illustrious forebears.

     

    Feedback

    SIR, Your piece, “Between Senator Anyim and Hon. Bala” last week, places me in a confusing scenario. While all you said are verifiable and may to a large extent be factual, I still do not believe that you are just waking up to the reality that the entire Nigerian project is a bitter contest for the control of resources especially among the major tribes of Nigeria. Although your bitterness cannot be said to be misplaced, it is too skewed to a section to make the desired impact. We all know that the ‘turn by turn’ syndrome which we all consciously instituted and inflicted on ourselves through zoning, federal character, power sharing etc have turned the country into a fertile ground for crass nepotism and tribalism which you are now bitter about. But the North which you feel so grossly short changed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation has itself in recent times been unmindful of its diversity and especially the need for cohesion being a region with a multiplicity of ethnic tribes and

    religion. Ask the minorities of the North and you will understand how painful it can be to be marginalized. Little wonder, some sections of the North are trying to redefine the concept of Northern Nigeria rightly or wrongly as clearly reflected in the unending ethnic and sectarian clashes. Before we can overcome issues like the ones you raised, charity must begin at home and we must accept that diversity is strength especially when we all understand what we commonly stand for and that an injustice to one is an injustice to all. While it is proper for any individual to blow the whistle when injustice is perceived, this must always be done irrespective of who is involved otherwise it will end up as a nice story badly told. As the saying goes, a truth told with a bad intent is worst than a lie. However, we must keep talking until we get to a point of common understanding.

     

    Emmanuel – 08050813181

     

     

  • Lagos-Ibadan is a failed road; Dead Police; Air Force Museum; UNESCO Education; CBN

    Lagos-Ibadan is a failed road; Dead Police; Air Force Museum; UNESCO Education; CBN

    After five and half hours trying to get from Ibadan to Lagos on Saturday September 14, I can declare on behalf of travelling Nigerians that the LAGOS IBADAN ROAD IS A FAILED ROAD and deserves EMERGENCY ONE WEEK REHABILITATION. Even though most Presidency bigwigs and National Assembly (NASS) members use helicopters and planes, the millions of fellow citizens who use the Lagos-Ibadan road daily demand emergency repairs to their cars and the road. A powerful, good government can cause Julius Berger and RCC to employ thousands of unemployed Nigerians to fill the potholes on the road in one or two weeks if they have any love for Nigerians and sense of national pride and urgency. October 1, Nigeria@53 is around the corner. Government should make this an EMERGENCY GIFT to Nigeria. The Lagos-Ibadan former expressway is to be fully refurbished in 24-30 months with an Infrastructure Bank loan of N167b for the 127km road. Still too long, too slow.

    Intelligent advisers should advise the President that accolades come from opening the completed road. The President should further reduce this contract to six or 12 months to be completed in his present term to attract political kudos and paparazzi. After all, who knows tomorrow or 2015? Even politicians do not live forever and must act positively when they hold power. Already Governor Segun Agagu has sadly gone, may he Rest In Peace; who next? The President should care about the millions of citizens and 100,000 vehicles suffering on the former expressway daily?

    The celebrated release of human rights lawyer, Mike Ozekhome and the explanations of the motivation of the captors do not justify the execution of FOUR living souls from worth but not rich families, the police men! The released lawyer should attend the funerals of each dead policeman. He should then fight for better pay and conditions for police and better compensation for victims’ families. We, SAN lawyer and policemen are all equal in the sight of God.

    Life is serious. Twenty-three killed in bridge disaster. Who will investigate the contractor and the ministry to exonerate them of corruption and incompetence in design and planning for flooding –it is, after all, a bridge? Which body will pay compensation to the victims? Folajomo Agunbiade, a student of Adekunle Ajasin University was shot in the head, for praying to God in tongues during an armed robbery that was not being resisted in her family home in Ibadan.  Her mother is abroad trying to cater for her children. God knows that Folajomo is in heaven now but will that explanation comfort the family? A five-year old Nigerian had a limb amputated abroad because of bone cancer. I saw two children with sightless eyes from beatings in school and home.  Another 10 killed this week in the ongoing Plateau Tiv and Berom farm-Fulani herder war, and we all still eat cow meat. Meanwhile politics seems more important. Shame!

    The proposed Air Force museum is better late than never, good. Ditto for museums for all other areas e.g. transport, and academic subjects. What happened to the Army museum? We know about the Yar’Adua Museum.  Where is the Aviation Museum which we begged for as the aviation authorities destroyed old planes for teaspoons and petty cash instead of giving them to the top technology universities and polytechnics and to science and aeronautical support for education, people’s museums and exhibitions? The Air Force should involve ministries of education, technology and the sciences.

    So we need UNESCO and Gordon Brown to repeat what ASUU and all Education NGOs and unions and student bodies have been saying for 40 years, before government will listen at all levels? Gordon Brown offers more money to empower wayward corrupt governments; the same governments happily divert to corruption or other projects considered more important than children’s welfare and education. Again foreign money, like DFID’s, will help bail out corrupt Nigerian leadership. The less aid we get, the more Nigerian money will be spent correctly. Aid should be in the form of software, short stay, 1-3month scholarships and equipment.

    Another 23 killed at a collapsed bridge in Katsina. No different from the thousands killed in the North this year by cow-farm violence, ‘no western book’ violence, kidnap and vehicle violence etc. Sorry, as you grieve, but look at the picture of the bridge disaster. Increasingly in the North, when we see pictures of collapsed roads, railways and bridges we see red laterite earth sometimes 20 feet deep but we see no stones, boulders, cement or iron rods supporting the laterite road. So once again the contractor, the supervising engineers, the ministries of works and finance must answer questions of culpability in these and other deaths. Rains sweep away weak, un-reinforced infrastructure. Who under-planned, under-budgeted, under-built the bridge and under-built the coupling to the immediate access structures which were dislocated from the bridge? Who has the names on the signatures on the documents? The COREN and the Nigerian Society of Civil Engineers and NGO civil rights groups need to do evaluation and soil checks just as forensic investigation is done with an air crash. Was the bridge poorly constructed for the expected rainfall?

    CBN boasts that Nigeria has the second highest African reserves. This is being economical with the truth or using creative financial accounting procedures. Did he tell you the population to funds ratio in the other countries ahead of Nigeria? Nigerians are being slapped and punched repeatedly.

  • APC and the PDP refugees

    APC and the PDP refugees

    Therever there is war, you’ll find a steady stream of refugees fleeing the conflict zone. No surprise then that the infighting within the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) threatens to unleash a flood of displaced politicians seeking refuge with whatever resembles a credible alternative platform.

    In the real world playing host to refugees can be nightmarish for whoever is at the receiving end. Sometimes communities and countries fearful that the newly homeless could overwhelm them have been known to slam the door in the faces of the desperate rabble. But no such misery awaits Nigeria’s burgeoning breed of political flotsam.

    Unlike the wretched of the earth to be found in war zones from Syria to Afghanistan, those on the verge of walking out of, or being kicked out of the PDP, can look forward to a warm embrace from a string of opposition parties.

    A few days ago the All Progressives Congress (APC) announced that not only was it willing to accommodate the disaffected PDP members, it mandated its own governors to woo their colleagues.

    The newly-registered Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) was ecstatic in hailing the rebellion on the very day it played out on Eagle Square, Abuja. It, too, would gladly welcome the G7 in its ranks.

    That the disgruntled PDP governors have so many suitors is understandable. The ability of incumbents to swing political fortunes in whatever direction they decide is far more assured at state level than at national level.

    Indeed, it is the recognition of that gubernatorial influence which triggered the desperate, but ultimately shambolic attempt to install a pliant person who will dance to the presidency’s tune as head of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF).

    As members of the New PDP have pointed out to their adversaries on National Chairman, Bamanga Tukur’s side, President Goodluck Jonathan, cannot win the 2015 elections without them. Operating as a united team, the ruling party – its diabolical performance in office notwithstanding – still has a chance of clinging to power courtesy of Nigerian-style “free and fair” elections.

    If the rebellion turns out to be irreversible and the New PDP joins forces with the likes of APC and others, that coalition stands a good chance of seizing power. That stark reality is not lost on analysts within the ruling party. It is also the greatest incentive for Jonathan and his people to quickly cut a deal with the troublemakers and keep the unraveling ‘largest party in Africa’ in what approximates one piece.

    Forget the posturing, rumours and finger-pointing: just look at the speed with which Jonathan has rallied to prevent the Abubakar Kawu Baraje faction from slipping through his fingers. From the day of the disastrous convention till now, an unending string of meetings have been holding.

    Even more significant is the fact that the band of rebels for whom a traffic jam of suitors has formed, have been attending the negotiations faithfully. That is not the sort of conduct you would expect from people who have blown up the bridge behind them.

    Everything that has been coming out of those meetings indicates that the president and his people will capitulate and give in to the demands of the rebels. But…

    The sticking point remains whether Jonathan should run in 2015 or not. On the basis of constitutionality it is impossible to bar the president from putting himself forward. But much has been made of some 2011 agreement in which the incumbent purportedly committed himself to serving just one term in exchange for getting northern support to breach existing zoning arrangements.

    All pointers now are that even if such an agreement exists in written form with thumbprints, signatures and legal seal, they will be repudiated by Jonathan. There’s been a lot of huffing and puffing on the part of northern figures over the breaching of that accord.

    We will soon know if such talk is just a negotiating stance or whether it has become a point of principle and deal breaker. Still, we must remind ourselves of the words of one-time German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck who defined politics as the art of the possible.

    It is easy to envisage Jonathan throwing Tukur under the bus, restoring control of party structures to governors in states which have been deliberately factionalised as part of the politics of 2015. The heat and dust generated so far notwithstanding, it will be no big thing to lift the suspension placed on Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi.

    But then negotiations are give and take. Jonathan can’t be doing all the giving. What does he get in return? Stranger things have happened before in politics; but I will not be shocked if after all the noise, those on the northern flank who have been resisting, surrender to Jonathan’s desire to run for a second term. What will be left will be selling the bitter pill to the party’s supporters in the region.

    Caution! Despite its very public mud fight, the ruling party is not dead. It still holds the presidency and all the advantages of incumbency. It controls security agencies and has shown that it will not shy away from dragging the Nigeria Police into its partisan battles. More importantly, its leading lights will do whatever is necessary to hang onto power – including swallowing healthy helpings of humble pie.

    I am amazed therefore at the naiveté of commentators who take it for granted that reconciliation between the rebels and the Tukur-controlled party leadership is foreclosed, and that the PDP as we knew it is dead and buried. It reminds me of that quote by the famous American writer, Mark Twain: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

    It would be disastrous for any party or groups of parties to base their short or long term plans for capturing power at the center on the help of PDP decampees. The question such strategists should ask themselves is what if the expected split never materialises?

    Even if the break with the Baraje faction is irrevocable, depend on it that the rump of the party that is left will not go down without a fight. That desperation to survive will make the 2015 polls potentially the most bloody and contentious Nigeria will witness since independence.

    After 14 years most Nigerians have a good idea of what PDP has to offer and given a chance they will deliver a damning verdict at the polls.

    That is why instead of wasting time gloating over the travails of the ruling party, or dreaming that the behemoth will crumble in such a fashion that it will no longer be a credible vehicle for capturing federal power, all serious opposition parties should be defining the alternative they offer in ways that will excite voters, and ensure apathy does not hand the ruling party victory against the run of play.

    We also know that in large parts of this country, ballots count for nothing. In many inaccessible areas votes are simply written – producing voting day numbers that would have embarrassed the likes of Saddam Hussein. The opposition should focus on developing ideas to checkmate the rigging we all know happens, but can do nothing about.

    Unless the opposition plans to defeat a full-strength PDP, it could be disappointed again as the monster recovers from its self-inflicted injuries to entrench itself for its self-proclaimed 60-year hegemony.

  • Between Anyim and Bala

    Between Anyim and Bala

    A little over two years ago, on July 25, 2012 to be exact, this column tried to draw the attention of President Goodluck Jonathan to one good reason why the nation’s war against corruption has never made any serious headway, namely the highly selective application of the weapons used in the war against the scourge.

    I used the word corruption then not in its narrow sense of “dishonest exploitation of power for personal again,” – in Encarta Concise English Dictionary’s phrase. I used the word in its broadest sense of the abuse of trust for whatever reason.

    I illustrated my point with four examples; (1) the huge oil subsidy scam then just unfolding in which some of the beneficiaries were members of the president’s kitchen cabinet, (2) the blatantly nepotistic appointment of the First Lady, Dame Patience, as a Permanent Secretary in the civil service of Bayelsa State, 13 years after she had retired on her own as wife of then Deputy Governor Goodluck Jonathan, (3) the highly selective application of public service rules and regulations in the appointment and retirement of senior civil servants, senior military commanders, police chiefs and those of other uniformed services, and (4) more specifically, the arbitrary extension of office given the bosses of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) and the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA), Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed and Ambassador Ezekiel Olaniyi Oladeji, respectively. The two had, on account of both age and years of service, been overdue for retirement.

    A year on after my article, things seem to have taken turns only for the worse, not better. And the main reason is clearly the president’s wish, regardless of all pretences to the contrary, to contest – and win – the 2015 presidential election, come hell, come high-water. The president has obviously become a hostage to this wish.

    Among those who seem to have taken him hostage is the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim, GCON. Anyim, it seems, has been exploiting President Jonathan’s apparent desperation for another term to gain as much undue advantage for his Igbo kith and kin in the federal civil service in return for a promise of the Igbo vote. There seems, at least in the eyes of Honourable Mustapha Bala, to be an irrefutable case of the gross violation of the principles of federal character as enshrined in the constitution against Anyim.

    Five months ago, Honourable Bala, a ranking member of the House of Representatives from Kano State, gave a full page interview in LEADERSHIP WEEKEND (March 16) in which he categorically accused Anyim of abusing his office. “Yes,” he said in the course of the interview, “the office of the SGF is corrupt and unfair to the North like I have stated before. Currently, we have many DGs (Directors General) of Northern origin whose tenure renewal is in the limbo because the SGF has failed to act on them.” The federal legislator went on to name several of the parastatals in question.

    Naturally, the SGF took umbrage. Four days after Bala’s interview, he took out a full page advert addressed to the Speaker, Rt. Honourable Aminu Tambuwal, in LEADERSHIP (March 20) in which he lambasted the legislator. Bala, he insinuated, was barely out of his diapers when he served as senate president with distinction nearly ten years before. After ticking off the “kindergarten” legislator – apologies, Chief Bisi Akande, the protem APC chief who recently dismissed Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency as “kindergarten”, much, of course, to the annoyance of all the president’s men – every inch of the way, Anyim concluded his advert by “humbly” requesting the Speaker to “kindly call Hon. Mustapha Bala to order.” Bala, he said, should be told to wake up “to the fact that Nigeria is no longer run by baseless ethnic sentiments as the divisive song has become archaic.”

    With due respect to the SGF, it is not a fact that the country has seized to be run by baseless ethnic sentiments. As the distinguished former Senate president knows all too well, Nigeria’s politics is a veritable bastion of ethnic – and sectarian – sentiments. This is why our politicians ask for – and all too often get – our votes, not on the basis of their integrity, commitment and ability to deliver on their promises. They ask for, and willy-nilly, often get our votes essentially on the basis of where they come from and what god they claim to worship. Unfortunately, this ethnic and sectarian framework determines much of everything else in our society; our economics, our businesses, our bureaucracy and parastatals, name it.

    Take, for example, the parastatals over which the former Senate president and Hon. Bala have been at war. There are at least eight – Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Nomadic Education Commission, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), PTDF and lately, Customs – whose leaderships have been in limbo for nearly a year now – except for Customs – simply because the SGF can’t seem to help the presidency, as it is his job, to make up its mind whether or not to renew them.

    On the other hand, there are other parastatals like the Debt Management Office, the Security Exchange Commission and the Federal Road Safety Commission the tenures of whose bosses have been quickly renewed at the SGF’s behest. He may have good reason for the difference in his speed of handling the two sets of parastatals but it may be more than mere coincidence that the second set has his fellow Igbos and Southerners as heads.

    If Anyim rejects these comparisons as unfair what can be his explanation for the single-minded determination with which the presidency, again at his apparent behest, has pursued the executive bill seeking to reduce the experience of the director-general of the Pension Commission (PENCOM) from 20 years to 15 just to suit the current acting DG, Mrs Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, who happens to be a fellow Igbo? The young lady may be a smart lawyer, but, for crying out loud, she is a 1998 graduate and came to her position as PENCOM’s pioneer company secretary and a general manager through a less than transparent procedure; she was appointed directly by the presidency instead of by the commission’s board as should’ve been the case.

    How, again, can the SGF explain recent goings-on at the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) which suggests he is being ethnicist? The agency, which is under the Ministry of Science and Technology and has the president as its statutory chair, has nine institutes, among them two scientific equipment and development institutes, (SEDI) one in Minna, the other in Enugu. That of Enugu is headed by Professor Christian Nwajagu, the SGF’s fellow Igbo.

    At the expiration of the tenure of the agency’s DG/CEO in March last year, the minister at the time, Professor Ita Okon Bassey Ewa, advertised the post in The Guardian, PUNCH and Daily Trust. Sixty two people applied out of whom 16 were shortlisted for written tests and interviews. Seven emerged as the best, with Dr Mohammed S. Haruna, the acting DG, at the top with a score of 72.1%. Prof. Nwajagu came a distant sixth with a score of 58.1%.

    One of the things Hon. Bala accused the SGF of was that he sat on the recommendation of the minister for the appointment of Dr Haruna as substantive DG/CEO because his preference had been Prof. Nwajagu. Eventually, Dr Haruna got the job last April but it was backdated to April last year.

    Since then the professor has served out one year over his mandatory eight years as director. However, alone of his colleagues who have served for eight years, he has been given a letter to continue as director without tenure, contrary to the extant regulations.

    Not only that. There are speculations that the SGF’s office is making moves to have the SEDI under him removed from the science and technology ministry to education and made autonomous to boot.

    It all looks like in this war between the former Senate president as the SGF and our “kindergarten” legislator, the facts and the dialectics do not seem to favour the former.

     

    Feedback

    Sir, You are just an incurable northern irredentist. You praise (Lt-Gen T. Y.) Danjuma for his stupendous riches without alluding to corruption (“Another open letter to Gen Danjuma”, September 4). If it were OBJ (General Obasanjo), the phrase ‘ill-gotten’ would have been used to describe his gesture. OBJ had a cabal but Yar’Adua had ‘a so-called cabal.’ Double speak.

    Danjuma had about ten oil wells, most of which he acquired during Abacha regime. Is that a godly person and a man of principle? This, in a country where millions wallow in abject poverty? He sold one of them to a Chinese company and made a cool $2 billion. The genesis of the acrimony between them was that OBJ retrieved 3 out of the wells because he found it unfair and too much.

    We know the saintly patriots amongst us. Danjuma is not one.

    You are still pained that OBJ didn’t retain you as his spokesman when he became president. Too bad.

    Lanre. +234805363????.

     

     

  • Boko Halal; Education and ‘Summer Renovation Budget’; Osun computers; Casualty painting

    Those who profess Boko Haram should identify as co-conspirators politicians, political terrorists, who ensured that too many Nigerians in schools graduate without knowledge and cheat. This has resulted in their needing retraining before employment. My friend Professor M Aken’Ova told me that in the old Zaria days the children sent to read book were called boko, a form of enculturation of the word ‘book’. Haram means ‘no’. Perhaps we should have ‘Boko Halal’ to counter the Boko Haram. The lack of educational activities of politicians in proportion to needs demonstrates that you do not have to blow up or ban schooling to get negative education. Schools, under political budget under-funding, have poured barely literate youths into the marketplace resulting in one of the solutions – entrepreneurship partly to cater for a poor employee: job availability ratio. But the entrepreneurial drive also addresses youths leaving schools as products of rubbish education neglected by education budgets. These youths are programmed to be ill-prepared and cannot get jobs so they are diverted into creating jobs for themselves and blamed if they fail –a win-win situation for the politician.

    We talk of system failure and that the system has failed the teachers and lecturers in need of staff space like staffrooms, books, equipment, skills, justifiable promotions and overburdening the teacher or lecturer with students. The gold standard is 30 students /class. Do staff also fail the system? Many blame teachers and lecturers for shirking their responsibilities by selling items on-duty and doing jobs in three universities at once. Even students are seen as being mediocre, too expectant of spoon-feeding and without ambition.

    Most Nigerian teachers, education politicians and students have failed the system in spite of 200 plus annual general meetings, AGMs, and education summits at Minister, commissioner, ASUU, NUT, STAN, NANS, and sub- group meetings like professional, ethnic, religious and subject levels. What little progress has been largely due to the unsung efforts of ASUU, the Old Students Associations and the high fees charged private students. The ASUU strike is on-going.    The ‘democratic’ period from 1999 is long enough for the 38 governments to put in place sufficient equipment and staff to achieve education equality across all states. The current abysmal performances in some states are due to fraudulent administration and abandonment of the youth. The education money has been misappropriated and lost to education middlemen, summits, consultants, retreats, hotel bills, honoraria, travel expenses and huge hall rental costs of Ladi Kwali Hall, with apologies to Ladi Kwali, the famous female Kwali potter who died in 1984. If that money had been spent on a ‘TEN BOOKS, ONE CHILD PROGRAMME’ and equipment, all Nigeria’s schools would be well equipped. It is this material that makes a school – books, library, equipment, laboratory, wall charts, sports opportunities, desks, chairs, toilets and sanitation. Leave one out and you have no school. This is why we are still talking of ‘disadvantaged states and students’, when we should be talking about disenfranchised students, disenfranchised by their political leadership – governments. Governments disadvantage their children. Most of the good students even in advantaged states had parents who spent up to 80% of income on education only to be checkmated at JAMB cut-off. States failed even with their own tertiary universities to rise above mediocrity. When Jesus said ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’, He did not mean that the children must ‘suffer’ but come unto Him without any suffering. ‘Suffer’ means ‘allow’, not ‘suffer-head’.

    Around the world, the long ‘summer holidays’ of July to September are the time for needs assessment for the next year and refurbishment, repairs and repainting in preparation the new year. In Nigeria these activities are zero. And that is where the problem of education lies. No preparation for the New School Year from anybody. This week some 30+million Nigerian students arrive in government-run unprepared schools and classrooms untouched for three months except by vandals and religious meeting participants.

    We all live near government education facilities. Name one that had a face-lift between July and September. Of course some governors are making tremendous efforts. Years ago I campaigned for schools to set up summer camps. Now summer camps are everywhere. Today, campaign for budgetary provision for ‘Summer Renovation of Educational Institutions’. This is part of job creation as upgrade requires artisans, science equipment marketers and publishers of books and educational posters. No doubt during the 2013 summer political recesses multi-billions are routinely spent to maintain the offices of political power in Abuja and all state capitals.

    Nigeria’s children deserve more now, before the reckless spending on 2014 elections and political posters. Governments must insert ‘Summer Recess Renovation of Schools and Institutions’ into budgets. Nigeria’s children are not animals to be sent to pigsties. The children deserve a decent ‘Child and Teacher Friendly Learning Environment’, CATFLE. The cost of refurbishing one airport would upgrade 1,000 schools with 500,000 beneficiaries. Governments should get its priorities right from the foundation.

    A ray of hope from Osun State’s student computer introduced by Ogbeni Aregbesola. It is as monumental as Awolowo’s ‘Free Education’. It hopefully will be adopted with improvements if necessary, across Nigeria as it frees the students and equalises levels from village to Osun villa. We anxiously await the results of comparative performance studies across states.

    Alert! Alert! Most government and private casualties, wards and toilets are dirty, disease ridden and needing emergency annual painting budgets. Anyone listening?